Some love the promise of peace and quiet and willingly jump at the chance to escape into the wilderness and quite literally… switch off. For the rest of us there is Field Candy.

Field Candy, out of the UK, first caught our attention over at designboom®, so we went exploring and discovered there was much more to these high-end homes away from home than merely fancy wrapping!

Bridging kitsch to quaint to “camp”, these youth oriented tents boast built-in internal storage for mp3 players, mobiles, a breathable cotton inner-tent, assembly instructions on indestructable paper and the choice of limited edition digitally printed fly covers from emerging designers as well as some well established artists. One such indivdual is Australia’s Jonathan Zawada (long time collaborator with The Presets also having worked widely in fashion as well as for Playstation and Coca-Cola) who was commissioned to design a tent cover that is currently being sold in a limited run of 50.

Coming in at over $1030AUD they are no small investment… but for the luxury of being able to spot your tent with ease in a vast festival campground or find your safe-base amongst dense bushland folliage – it’s a small, whimsical price to pay really – we just don’t see these becoming military standard any time soon.
We’ve picked out some of our favourites here, but pop over to their website and check out the collections for yourself.

The aesthetes at colour HQ: Pantone, have announced the annual Colour Of The Year!

Hot on the heels of last years “Honeysuckle” comes the racy “Tangerine Tango”! Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute® has the following to say of this years shade:

Sophisticated, but at the same time dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it…. Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.

Alongside Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Cartier and Louis Vuitton is the one and only Kenneth Cobonpue! His much lauded Bloom Lounge Chair has been singled out as exceptional design and we couldn’t agree more.

Hundreds of fine-running stitches radiate from the center of this whimsical chair, which makes us feel like we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole..

Already awarded the “Coup de Coeur” at Maison et Objet 2009 in Paris, this luscious collection also includes a more compact club chair.

In November the 2011 Tokyo Designer’s Week (TDW) saw Spanish brands curated en masse in an exhibition titled: SPAINALIGHT a celebration of ‘light and passion’ staged at the Spanish Embassy in Tokyo .

Spainalight’s mise-en-scene pays tribute to the warm, Mediterranean light which Spanish designers make full use of in their work – a charming, playful light conducive to creativity, which celebrates innovation and avant-garde experimentation.

Showcasing 116 pieces by 43 designers and 52 companies, the exhibition was very well recieved and highlighted the shared Spanish/Japanese ethos of innovation as a driving force in creative persuits. Sancal, nanimarquina, Vondom, Andreu World, and Lzf Lamps (amongst others) celebrated the recent works of Patricia Urquiola, Bouroullec Studio, Mariscal and Jaime Hayon!

Recent disasters in Japan did little to dissuade participants and visitors to the annual fixture on the creative calendar. German architect Florian Busch was engaged as creative director for 2011. In the central exhbition centre not far from SPAINALIGHT the concept of exhibiting was given a fresh perspective:

By putting no restriction on the booth height and by arranging the booths in checkerboard street pattern, we have created a town-like exhibition space…